Thursday, July 13, 2006

The body and city are related in terms of both being socio-political geospaces.They are both emblematic and symptomatic of modernization and development paradigms.The city is the center of national development, the model in which the regions are to be developed.The body is the site of national identity formation.In here is where the primary models of citizenship and citizenry are formed and transformed.

As both are primary sites of national development, the body and city also match the nation�s transnational anchoring of national development.They are the also the primary markers of the nation�s uneven development.Although primarily seen through the cultural category of class, the nation�s uneven development is also magnified through discrepancy in gender, sexual, racial and ethnic divides.They do not only harp the nation�s success, more importantly, they signify the nation�s failure to fully develop.

Another important configuration in the relationship of the body and city involves its dialectics.The city obliquely manifests the corporeal development and maldevelopment of urbanized bodies.The body represents the city�s own coming into metropolitan being and its failure.On the one hand, just like the body, the city is corporealized.The high level of respiratory diseases, for example, among urban bodies is similar to the city being a choke zone.

One just has to view the skycrapers of Ortigas and Makati from the hills of Antipolo to see the smog enveloping the city.The city�s clogged lung system, in turn, points to the failure of the Clean Air Law to be fully implemented, the lack of green spaces in urban planning, overpopulation of people and vehicles, the lack of roads, and so on.

Although banned in Metro Manila, the continuing proliferation of leaded gasoline is prevalent in its exteriors.The city is unable to expel its own excessive polluted emissions.On the other hand, the body is also citified.Just as the city acquires the markers of a transnational national development, such as skyscrapers, mass transportation system, skyways, malls and new entertainment complexes, the body also acquires the cosmopolitan and urbanized ways of the city.Transnational toiletries clean and maintain the body.It is also clothed and accessoried by transnational produce sold and bought in malls.

The body learns the ways of citified living.It acquires the necessary skills to compete, survive and triumph in the city. In sports, for example, it is through wall climbing, squash, fencing, table tennis, all requiring use of limited precious space to optimally release tension, or even the machine-driven dance revolution that lets paying clients test dance mimicking skills through computer-generated images and steps.The contemporary body is transformed in the ways of the city.

Film becomes the preferred media to filter the relationship of bodies and cities.Film has been referred to as the art of the twentieth century, a century characterized by mass dissemination of technology.It provides a bridge to the present postmodern experience � imagining fictional identities and identification with reel characters and narratives, ability to internalize the mass medium, probing into individual psyches and collective wellsprings of being, all drawn from the power of the image to transform real experience.

Film provides a historical link between the modern � the unevennes of development �and the postmodern experience � the plurality of identity, fictive subjectivity, eclectic aesthetics, among others.Postmodern aesthetics, after all, can be found in the very characteristics that so define the film medium.Film becomes the collective consciousness that mediates the liminal experience of the politics in the age of excessive consumption, ethical prioritization in the age of plurality, or real pain and anguish in the inability to materialize the simulated ideals.What film provides is a communal translation of the historical and aesthetic moment of development, the experience in which uneven development can be aestheticized.

At the onset of film�s introduction into the country, the city provided the landscape of locating the nation in the new landscape of new global georule under the US.Geared primarily for the American audience, Edison and other producers sent out camera men to shoot footage of exotic landscapes.While Edison also did short feature films on the Philippine-American War, the images seen on screen were shot in its studios in New Jersey.

The �authentic� images of the Philippines dwelled on shots of Manila and its nearby areas.Escolta, for example, showed people and buffalos crossing a bridge.What these films undertook was to orientalize the local scene, to utter them different, and subsequently, to justify colonialism.Such images fused the distinction between city and bodies, drawing attention to their geo-difference from the American colonizers.

Mga Ligaw na Bulaklak (1957) showed the post-war migration of women into the city.Here, two sisters get entwined to Manila�s highly lucrative postwar underground economy.The elder sister works as a clerk in a private office owned by a woman boss.The seeming liberation of women is historical.Women were allowed access into the white collar labor force via the public school system introduced by the American colonizers.Education was disseminated to fill up the American colonial bureaucracy.

Though locals assumed the clerical positions, the employment provided for social mobility never realized before.Thus, the post-war era reified the place of women in the bureaucracy or even beyond.The younger sister is seduced by the material affluence of the woman in the syndicate.Envious of the woman�s private markers of affluence, the younger sister is introduced to the ways of the syndicate, doing menial work for it.In the end, her traditional rootedness gives way to her squealing to the police.She falls in love for the man and allows herself to once again be used by another patriarchal institution.The film closes in a moral positivity � that evil, in the end, is conquered by the forces of good.

In the opening scene, Curacha (1998) stares at her naked body as sounds of the first mass rail transport system in the country is heard.She speaks to herself, locating each bodily part to a section of the city.All sections, however, connote an aberration, a negation of the developmental promise of city parts to be realized.The body of the torera (live show performer) is analogous to the corporeality of the city.Just like the city, the female body manifests the impossibility of development to fully materialize, the disjuncture of corporeal parts to cohere into a benevolent geospace, and the promise of development always dangled yet never fully realized.However, the female body is twice abjected � first, in the performance of sex work, and second, being woman.

The female body is made symptomatic and receptacle of the city.On the one hand, the city is a socializing space for norms of sexuality and gender, and development for its constituent bodies.On the other hand, bodies inhabit the city and imbue it with counter-claims to national, urban, sexual, gender, generational and religious citizenship.Thus, both bodies and city are sites of contestation, each claiming to represent the ideal corporeality that materializes national development.

The United States� colonization of the Philippines at the turn of the twentieth century inevitably shifted the trajectory of development of the Philippine nation.Coming at the heels of victory against the Spanish colonizers, Filipinos were all too ready to seize the historical moment of defining and implementing their own vision of nationhood.However, the United States� colonization shifted the forces in the decisive calibration of the development of the nation--from a mass-supported local leadership to a rule by feudal elites and American colonizers.Since the Philippines provided for the United States its own defining moment at empire-building, the Philippines being its first colonial venture outside its own national domain, the model of enlightened colonialism was implemented.

This means that as the national resources were exploited for colonial interests, so too were the modern areas of cultural life--health, sanitation, education, and communications--also engineered to provide a conducive system for American capital to take root.Just as the American colonial period endeavored to modernize the colony by introducing the rice thresher and artesian well (1904), electric streetcars and telephone system (1905), postal savings bank and electric iron (1906), it also introduced ice cream, movies and rat control (1899), public school system (1901), and golf clubs (1902).Side by side with the economic and political circuiting of the colony, its cultural transformation was also at stake.Today�s Philippine modernity has become indelibly inscribed in and by American colonialism.

Philippine animation takes root from two major sources, both grounded in American-introduced capitalism: service businesses and print capitalism.The two sources, however, started with a similar beginning in cartooning.Antonio S. Velasquez, known as the "Father of the Tagalog Komiks," began in cartoonised advertising, creating characters that personify consumer products and businesses being introduced in the American colonial era: "Isko" for Esco shoes; "Tikboy" for Tiki-Tiki, a children�s vitamin syrup; "Nars Cafi" for Cafiaspirinia; "Captain Cortal" for Cortal; "Castor" for Botica Boie�s Castoria; "Aling Adina Comadrona" for United Drug products, "Charity" for Philippine Charity Sweepstakes, and so on.The corporate and brand mascots created by Velasquez were concentrated in the health and drug industry, a major focus of American social engineering.Even the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes was founded to primarily subsidise health programs.

Velasquez, however, was famous for creating the comic strip based on the character Kenkoy in 1928.Collaborating with Romualdo Ramos, a translator in the advertising department, Velasquez�s "Kenkoy" became a success.Kenkoy reflected the contradictions of Filipinos colonised into American rule, sporting a "gleaming Valentino hairstyle and wore baggy pants," and spoke pidgen English.

"Kenkoy" was translated in six other vernacular publications, enabling the character to reach a national audience.It also gave birth to other strips.Velasquez�s design for Kenkoy�s clothing was copied by readers.Poet Jose Corazon de Jesus, more famous as Huseng Batute, wrote a poem "Pagpapakilala" (Introduction), subtitled as "Ay introdius yu Mister Kenkoy" (I Introduce you to Mister Kenkoy).Composer Nicanor Abelardo wrote the song "Ay, Naku, Kenkoy!" (Oh my Kenkoy) and "Kenkoy Blues," a march.The character Kenkoy gave rise to spin-offs, depicting his family, parents, sweetheart, archival, community members, side-kick, children, and others.

"Kenkoy" made the Philippine komiks industry.More so, it provided both humor and a cultural idiom during the anxious period of maintaining nationalism and awaiting for Philippine independence.After the violent Filipino-American War (1899-1902) that claimed over 600,000 lives in Luzon alone, the postwar period was marked by continued resistance, specifically from the swelling labour ranks incorporated into American colonial capitalism. Education, the key to social mobility for the local majority promised by the American colonisers, could no longer sustain the egalitarian dream.

Daniel Doeppers states, "By the late 1920s, the major avenues for career mobility were increasingly constricted."However, from 1920 to 1930, increased production of agricultural products surged--sugar exports by 450 percent, coconut oil by 233 percent and cordage by 500 percent.Such economic profits, owned by local elites, bolstered confidence in the American presence in the colony.With the popular sentiment wanting independence, the Commonwealth was inaugurated in 1935, paving the way for imminent Philippine independence.By this time, however, structures of American colonial capitalism were already institutionalised and wrecking havoc in the national lives of Filipinos because of the inequitable policies enacted during the earlier period of colonial rule.

An even earlier aspect of print capitalism that provided for a more parodic introspection into the American colonial rule were the politically-oriented publications in the early 1900s--the Telembang and Lipang Kalabaw (1907).These two publications regularly featured political cartoons, commenting on the colonial figures, their policies and era.The political cartoons provided an avenue for churning social commentary at a time when the colonial set-up imposed stringent policies on the articulation and display of Philippine nationalism.

The Sedition Law, passed in 1901, as historian Renato Constantino explains, "imposed the death penalty or a long prison term on anyone who advocated independence or separation from the United States even in peaceful means."It also punished any person who would "utter seditious words or speeches, write, publish or circulate scurrilous libels" against the United States government or the Insular Government.Through cartooning, with minimal use of the written word, Lipang Kalabaw provided for an edgy commentary on the colonial condition, usually, the contradictions of colonial rule that continues even in the postcolonial times: the perennial floods of Manila, the corruption of the police, the Frankenstein-growth of politicians sporting guns and over-sized egos, the Americanised manners of the emerging youth, the death of Spanish language and culture, the captive nature of the English language over traditional values, profligate lending scandals at the Philippine National Bank, public hospitals that denied citizens basic service, the gun-happy constabulary, and so on.

Cartooning provided for a dual contradictory purpose--it reified the operations of American colonial capitalism, and it also subverted the colonial set-up.While the American colonial set-up harped on liberal democracy, press freedom, and free speech, contradictory policies, however, allowed only for their oppressive and limited articulation.Such contradiction is best embodied in the figure of the cartoonist.As Alfred McCoy observed, the Filipino cartoonists were "often the leading artists of their generation seeking survival in a colonial society with little use for their talents."The Filipino cartoonists worked for both the interests of print capitalism and advertising.Like artists Velasquez and Fernando Amorsolo, other renowned Filipino cartoonists worked for the interest of both print capitalism and advertising.They served the business interest of growing areas of the service industry, creatively providing for mascots and other advertising needs.They also served the Filipino nationalist cause, drawing political commentaries through the komiks and satirical publications, even at the expense of producing racist cartoons.

American enlightened colonialism brought new levels of consciousness and opportunities for businesses.As disseminated through the public school system, English became a prominent language.English literacy was a key factor in the growth of mass circulation papers.By 1939, the total circulation of all Philippine publications had reached to 1.4 million, of which 722,000 were in English.

It was only during the postwar and post-independence era that Philippine animation took a serious turn.Philippine animation prior to 1953 was mostly focused on commercial advertising, churning cartoons for print and television commercials.In 1953, komiks cartoonist Larry Alcala, made an 8mm film, a black-and-white exercise in movement of a girl jumping rope and a boy playing with a yoyo.Other pioneers in animation were Jose Zaballa Santos and Francisco Reyes, who did a cooking oil endorsement, Juan Tamad (1955), a six-minute work based on a popular folklore character; and Nonoy Marcelo, who did Biag ni Lam-ang (The Life of Lam-ang, 1979), a 60-minute feature on the adventures of the Ilocano epic hero, and Annie Batungbakal (1974), a seven-minute clip for the Nora Aunor movie.Animation in film was used for special effects, like in Ibong Adarna (The Adarna Bird, 1941) and Ang Panday (The Blacksmith, 1983).One can still observe the latent economic imperative at work in these animation pioneers; work was done for advertising and the film business.There is also the political imperative, as Marcelo�s feature dealt with the ethnic epic from the region of then President Ferdinand Marcos.

Such dual purpose in cartooning remains emplaced even in present-day animation.Contemporary Filipino cartoonists are also imbricated in both multinational advertising and subcontracting work, and a purer artistic quest for a national idiom.The Marcos period provided a space for animation production both useful to and subversive of the national administration ideals.No other president in Philippine political history has been so conscientious in conceiving and implementing a national development program than Marcos.He built massive infrastructures and enacted laws that primarily supported multinational businesses.In his dream of a New Society (Bagong Lipunan), unfolded after the declaration of martial rule in 1972, he envisioned to clear the national space for both nationalism to firmly take ground and foreign businesses to flourish.

With a background in animation from a New York film school, Marcelo did animation work for the administration.Though only the first episode was produced, Tadhana (Destiny) was envisioned to popularize Marcos�s rewriting of national history.In the only episode, the war between Spain and Portugal for global colonial rights was done through zooming and intercutting images of illustrations and maps.In preparation for war, the Spanish armada moves in with music from the Star Wars theme.Marcelo also did animation for Kabataang Baranggay (Youth League), the national youth organization headed by Imee Marcos, the eldest child of Marcos. He also did the animation sequences for an education series produced by a Marcos office intended to create local entrepreneurs.Episodes dealt with the Green Revolution themes of self-reliance in food using popular technology, such as tilapia (carp) raising and bee farming.However, Marcelo was also to be made famous by a newspaper comic strip Tisoy that documented and satirized the conditions of the Marcos administration.

By the 1980s, however, the Marcos circuiting of the nation in global multinational work had already been institutionalized.The period was also marked by economic and political turmoil that led to the Marcoses� downfall in 1986.One major development in animation that grew out of the direct development policies of Marcos was the operation of foreign studios in the country.Subcontractual work was used by Marcos to entice foreign business.Harping on cheap but highly skilled local labor, Filipino cartoonists were employed in foreign animation studios to do episodes of various Hanna Barbara and Toei series.The Australian-based animation firm, Burbank Studios, pioneered animation subcontracting in the Philippines in 1983.Given tax incentives and other investment lures, Burbank Studios focused on the animation needs of the local advertising market in its beginning.Eventually, it also produced an educational animation series for the Middle East.Burbank Studios wanted to break into the American market.It needed the proximity of the Philippines to the United States as a base of operation, and the skills of Filipino laborers as chief resource.It trained local animators who either established their own advertising firms or transferred to other multinational studios when Burbank Studios folded in the late 1980s.

Presently, the big players in Philippine animation are FilCartoons and Philippine Animation Studio, Inc. (PASI), owned by foreigners.FilCartoons, for example, does work on Mad Jack the Pirate and Toonsylvania, cartoon shows for the American firms Saban and Dreamworks SKG.Their artists have done much of the acclaimed work in Fox Studios� Anastasia and Disney�s Mulan, among others.Such developments have led critics to believe that Filipino artists have been reduced to artisans:subcontractors for foreign animation studios, it is quite obvious that FilCartoons artists are reduced to craftsmen who follow a codified set of rules, without free rein in their art.Another employment track for Filipino cartoonists involves overseas contract work, a program institutionalized during the Marcos period that relies on exporting Filipino labor for precious dollar remittances.The systematic export of Filipino labor has presently deployed four million overseas contract workers that yield some $6 billion annual remittances, about two-thirds of the present national budget.More and more Filipino cartoonists work for overseas Disney, Malaysian, and Singaporean studios.

Filipino cartoonists find affinity with their fellow nationals doing multinational and overseas contract work.They are hired because of their pleasing personalities, command of the English language, high skills, western disposition, and their acceptance of lower salaries than their counterparts in the West.A recent Philippine subcontracting project was the Chito Chat series on MTV Asia.The character Chito provides onscreen chatter about the music video being shown.Cartoonists also find themselves doing work in advertising companies, Star Animation, owned by the local entertainment conglomerate ABS-CBN, and the children=s show, Batibot, that regularly features animation segments.Recently, however, there is a slight reversal of the situation as Filipino artists and enterpreneurs came up with the Stone comic book series, stylishly drawn, based on Philippine lore, and sold at comic book conventions in the United States.

With its immense pool of creative talents, Philippine animation has yet to commercially take off.The first and only locally animated television series, Ang Panday, produced in 1987, only drew a curious audience, and the first full-length commercial film, Ibong Adarna (The Adarna Bird, 1997), also proved dismal in attracting a local audience.The major figure in feature animation in the Philippines is Geirry Garccia.Paling by comparison to big-budgeted Hollywood and Japanese animation, local animation has yet to be commercially competitive.This is also the drawback of global competition conceived during the administration of Marcos� successor, Corazon Aquino, and implemented by her successors, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada.

Barring protectionism, local businesses have yet to rise above the competition, becoming lowly placed in the global division of capital and labor.The export-processing zones started during the Marcos dictatorship allowed for a wide-ranging incentive package to foreign businesses, even the promise of a strike-free environment.In the former American airforce base, Clark, now primarily transformed into one such zone, two companies, GM Mini Computer Exchange and Cerulean Digital Colors Animators, have located in the Clark Special Economic Zone, hiring some 450 workers for its digital animation workload.

Animation inscribed the nation in colonial and transnational imaginaries.During its preconception, cartooning allowed for conservative and contrary ideals of the colonial set-up to be articulated and popularized.Cartooning in advertising and print capitalism, involving the same set of artists, articulated the dual position of colonial rule and national selfhood.Up until the mid-1980s, Marcos� emplacement of national ideals toward the service of multinational businesses provided a divide between business in the new world order and the further interrogation of selfhood.FilCartoons artisans, for example, are responsible for shows like Chicken and Egg, Johnny Bravo, Captain Planet, and Johnny Quest.Every Filipino cartoonist participating in big-budget feature animation projects by Disney or Dreamworks gets high media publicity, specially in the national dailies.It is only in the recent times that commerce and national ideals are again merging, as the artists of the 1980s developed their own animation companies that service various businesses.In the 1990s, a newer breed of animators is emerging.Unlike the prior generation that made various attempts at inscribing a national idiom in this form, the 1990s artists are more vocal in the articulation of the politics of newer social movements, such as environmentalism, feminism, social injustices, and so on.